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Homepage Design: First Impression Matters

Homepage as The Core of Your Website

Homepage design is the most important thing to build first before making the second or the third-page design. Since homepage is your main page or the core of your website, you should be aware of what kind of design will affect your audiences the most.

But in this article, I will not tell you about how to design a homepage or developing it. There are a lot of tutorials on YouTube or website. In this Limecommerce website also contains a lot of tutorials to make your homepage design awesome. I will tell you about my own perspective on how to make your homepage design better and gives a good first impression to your audiences.

Let's say you already have ideas in your mind about goals of your website and what you want to present to the world. But you don't know how to design it. You don't even know what kind of unique identity that your website should have. In this huge competition of digital era, I think you should know about some principles to make your website and your homepage design more intriguing. And also make your website has an identity that sticks in your audiences' mind.

Perspective of Marketing

When I studied marketing management in my college about two years ago, I discovered three fundamentals of the marketing. These three principles are the first step before making any products or brainstorming a promotion strategy. It's called STP process. These process could give you an option to make your website and your homepage design much better.

STP Approach

STP is a term in marketing that stands for Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning. Well, if you are a non-expert in this field, then let me explain it. In Wikipedia, Segmentation is the process of dividing a broad consumer or business market normally consisting of existing and potential costumers, into sub-groups of consumers (known as segments) based on some type of shared characteristics. In short, you're dividing the people of the world into smaller audiences that based on your business field.

Targeting is selecting a segment or series of segments that are profitable in short term and long term of your business timeline. And Positioning is a strategy that aims to make a brand occupy a distinct position, relative to competing brands, in the mind of the customer.

News Website

From the popular website, we can see that every one of them is having a segmented market and position in the mind of their costumer. Let's see about British Broadcasting Corporation or BBC. It's the world's oldest national broadcasting organization. BBC has News Website based in British, England and it's a platform that provides you some news about what happens across the world.

In their website, the homepage design provides you with some headline article, menu, search option, and sign-in feature. There is also an actual date on the up-right corner of the page to tell you implicitly that they are providing you with actual news. That's the news company. How about we see another field?

E-commerce Website

******* is an e-commerce website from China that has tons of segments targeted. Because it's a worldwide company that has millions of products in it. We don't have to compare it with the BBC's because their field of business is different. But what If we compare it with Amazon? Amazon is Jeff Bezos' commercial website. It's an e-commerce website as well just like ******* Group. Then, let's take a look and observe some more.

Between their website, we know that the position of the menu and promos are different. There are a lot of promos and appealing promotion lines that seduce the visitors. But the most important thing here is that ******* sells some manufactured product that Amazon doesn't sell. It's because ******* is a B2B (business to business) platform and provide their costumers with raw materials as well.

Amazon doesn't have raw materials, but they sell books, DVDs, and many other computer kinds of stuff. With distinct positioning like this, we don't need to be confused if we want to start our business in the industrial field but don't have the materials. We just open ******* and buy from there. Or when we need a new book that written by these famous authors like J.K Rowling or Philip Kotler, we know which website to land.

The same thing on their homepage is there are always search bar to find the products that suit the visitors and ‘Order' option since they are an e-commerce website. And it has a lot call-to-action option to make the visitor know what to do next. These are the effective way that ******* and Amazon do to make the visitors become costumers.

Industrial Products Website

In my previous post, I claim that Apple is one company that has the most simple website design. But after I discover this Tesla website, I changed my mind. If you open Tesla.com, you will only find a... single page without the scroll-down option. We know that not everyone that open any homepage will scroll down to the bottom of the page and see whatever the designer presented on the website. But for my first impression when I see this website is I want to buy one of this car. A car that has the quickest acceleration, longest range, and presented as the safest car ever. It got me with their best positioning tagline.

First Impression Matters

When you already have followers on your website, that's a good thing. But what about the people that you targeted but have no idea about your website? What if they open your website for the first time and see nothing that matters to them? Are they going to buy some of our products? Probably not. They don't even want to look at your website again because your homepage does not provide solutive information or products for them.

After observing those websites, we know that every website has its unique way to presents whatever they sell. It depends on their field, the targeted market, and what kind of products that they have. All of those become the positioning of the website itself. Especially from the homepage design or the core of their website. BBC is a trustworthy and actual news provider, ******* is a manufacturer and supplier company, Amazon is selling daily needs, books, and DVDs, and Tesla sells quickest, durable, and safest electric cars.

From them, we can learn that it's important to design the best homepage and get our good first impression. Not only because they will buy something or consume our products, but also to make them loyal to us. They will come again and again to our website and buy our products. They even went to their friends or close relatives to tell about our awesome website. That’s why in a matter of homepage design, the first impression matters.

Very good post , i can tell from what ive read that you have studied this subject , its a path that i am about to take especially the marking area of things. I found myself falling in the pitfall of writing and designing what i thought would work, i never even considered designing for the person that i am trying to sell to . Somebody once told me if you know your audience or market well enough Ie what they are looking for how they behave online , its 80 % of the battle.

Another thing id like to add , is something ive learned in other industries besides the on;ine marketing and that is to avoid being like a race horse with tunnel vision , having spent so much time in a single field trains you to follow a certian set of prtocols , sometimes stepping back and trying something absurd , or just thinking away from what are considered good safe techniques , is how GREAT innovation are born.

Since I'm studying marketing for 4 years, this one is my favorite strategy. And as I said, it's fundamental to know your markets first. So thank you for your feedback. Hope you will thrive to your goals! Good luck!

This is so true. People often undermine the value of a visually appealing website. They think okay, I am selling a great product. It doesn't matter if my site is slow or clumsy. They'll buy. But that's so wrong. If you have a Facebook ad going on which redirects the user to your site, that'll be the first impression they'll have about your brand.

It's like your home. Would you have an important guest visit a dirty house? Absolutely not! Similarly, your website needs to have a beautiful, simple design in accordance with your niche. Having a good aesthetics in your website can go a long way to stay in the user's mind and resonate your ideas with them.

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